IRENE’S DISCOVERY
A taxi soon brought the girls to the door of Dr. Faulkner’s nineteenth
century stone house. The stoop had been torn down and replaced by a
modern entrance hall, but the high ceilings and winding stairways were
as impressive as ever.
Drinking in the fascination of it, Judy and Irene followed the man,
Oliver, who carried their bags right up to the third floor where
Pauline had a sitting room and a smaller bedroom all to herself. The
former was furnished with a desk, sofa, easy chairs, numerous shaded
lamps, a piano and a radio.
Here the man left them with a curt, “’Ere you are.”
“And it’s good to have you, my dears,” the more sociable housekeeper
welcomed them. Soon she was bustling around the room setting their bags
in order. She offered to help unpack.
“Never mind that now, Mary,” Pauline told her. “We’re dead tired and I
can lend them some of my things for tonight.”
“Then I’ll fix up the double bed in the next room for your guests and
leave you to yourselves,” the kind old lady said.
As soon as she had closed the door Judy lifted her cat out of the
hatbox. With a grateful noise, halfway between a purr and a yowl,
Blackberry leaped to the floor and began, at once, to explore the rooms.
“His padded feet were made for soft carpets,” Judy said fondly.
“How do you suppose he’d like gravel?” Pauline asked.
“Oh, he’d love it!” Judy exclaimed. “You know our cellar floor is
covered with gravel, and he sleeps down there.”
“Is this gravel in the cellar?” Irene asked, beginning to get an attack
of shivers.
Pauline laughed. “Goodness, no! It’s on the roof garden.” She walked
across the room and flung open a door. “Nothing shivery about that, is
there?”
“Nothing except the thought of standing on the top of one of those tall
buildings,” Irene said, gazing upward as she followed Pauline.
The view fascinated Judy. Looking out across lower New York, she found
a new world of gray buildings and flickering lights. In the other
direction the Empire State Building loomed like a sentinel.
“I never dreamed New York was like this,” she breathed.
“It grows on a person,” Pauline declared. “I would never want to live
in any other city. No matter how bored or how annoyed I may be during
the day, at night I can always come up here and feel the thrill of
having all this for a home.”
“I wish I had a home I could feel that way about,” Irene sighed.
The garden was too alluring for the girls to want to leave it. Even
Blackberry had settled himself in a bed of geraniums. These and other
plants in enormous boxes bordered the complete inclosure. Inside were
wicker chairs, a table and a hammock hung between two posts.
“This is where I do all my studying,” Pauline said, “and you two girls
may come up here and read if you like while I’m at school.”
“At school?” Judy repeated, dazed until she thought of something that
she should have considered before accepting Pauline’s invitation. Of
course Pauline would be in school. She hadn’t been given a holiday as
the girls in Farringdon had when their school burned down. Judy and
Irene would be left to entertain themselves all day unless Dr. Faulkner
had some plans for them. Judy wondered where he was.
After they had gone inside again, that is, all of them except
Blackberry who seemed to have adopted the roof garden as a permanent
home, she became curious enough to ask.
“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Pauline said in surprise. “Father is away. A
medical conference in Europe. He’s always going somewhere like that,
but he’ll be home in two or three weeks.”
“Then we’ll be alone for three weeks?” Irene asked, dismayed.
“Why not?” Pauline returned indifferently. “There’s nothing to be
afraid of with servants in the house.”
But Irene was not used to servants. Ever since her father became
disabled she had waited on herself and kept their shabby little house
in apple-pie order. The house was closed now and their few good pieces
of furniture put in storage. All summer long there would not be any
rent problems or any cooking. Then, when fall came, she and her father
would find a new home. Where it would be or how they would pay for it
worried Irene when she thought about it. She tried not to think because
Dr. Bolton had told her she needed a rest. Her father, a patient of the
doctor’s, was undergoing treatments at the Farringdon Sanitarium. The
treatments were being given according to Dr. Bolton’s directions but
not by him as Judy’s home, too, was closed for the summer. Her parents
had not intended to stay away more than a week or two, but influenza
had swept the town where they were visiting. Naturally, the doctor
stayed and his wife with him. Judy’s brother, a reporter and student of
journalism, had gone to live in the college dormitory.
Thus it was that both girls knew they could not return to Farringdon no
matter how homesick they might be. They had the cat for comfort and
they had each other. Ever since Irene had come to work in Dr. Bolton’s
office these two had been like sisters. Lois, Lorraine, Betty, Marge,
Pauline—all of them were friends. But Irene and Honey, the other girl
who had shared Judy’s home, were closer than that. Judy felt with them.
She felt with Irene the longing of the other girl for something to hold
fast to—a substantial home that could not be taken away at every whim
of the landlord, just enough money so that she could afford to look her
best and the security of some strong person to depend upon.
“Will your school last long?” Irene was asking the dark-haired girl.
“Not long enough,” Pauline sighed, revealing the fact that she too had
troubles.
“Then you’ll be free?” Irene went on, unmindful of the sigh. “We can go
places together? You’ll have time to show us around.”
Pauline shrugged her shoulders. “Don’t talk about time to me. Time will
be my middle name after I graduate. There isn’t a single thing I really
want to do, least of all stay at home all day. College is a bore unless
you’re planning a career. What do you intend to do when you’re through
school?”
“I hadn’t planned,” Irene said, “except that I want time to read and go
ahead with my music. Of course I’ll keep house somewhere for Dad. It
will be so nice to have him well again, and I love keeping house.”
“What about your work for my father?” Judy asked.
Irene’s eyes became troubled. “He doesn’t really need me any more. I
know now, Judy, that you just made that position for me. It was lovely
of you, but I—I’d just as soon not go back where I’m not needed. Your
father trusts too many people ever to get rich and he could use that
money he’s been paying me.”
“Don’t feel that way about it,” Judy begged.
Irene’s feelings, however, could not easily be changed, and with both
girls having such grave worries the problem bid fair to be too great a
one for even Judy to solve. Solving problems, she hoped, would
eventually be her career for she planned to become a regular detective
with a star under her coat. Now she confided this ambition to the other
two girls.
“A detective!” Pauline gasped. “Why, Judy, only men are detectives. Can
you imagine anyone taking a mere girl on the police force?”
“Chief Kelly, back home, would take her this very minute if she
applied,” Irene declared.
Pauline nodded, easily convinced. This practical, black-haired,
blue-eyed girl had helped Judy solve two mysteries and knew that she
had talent. But Pauline didn’t want to meet crooks. She didn’t want to
be bothered with sick or feeble-minded people and often felt thankful
that her father, a brain specialist, had his offices elsewhere. Pauline
wanted to meet cultured people who were also interesting.
“People, like that man we met on the bus,” she said, “who read and can
discuss books intelligently. I’d hate to think of his being mixed up in
anything crooked.”
“You can’t _make_ me believe that he was,” Irene put in with a vigor
quite rare for her. “Couldn’t you just see in his eyes that he was
real?”
“I didn’t look in his eyes,” Judy returned with a laugh, “but you can
be sure I’ll never be satisfied until we find out what that mysterious
telegram meant.”
In the days that followed Judy learned that the mere mention of the
stranger’s name, Dale Meredith, would cause either girl to cease
worrying about a home or about a career, as the case might be.
“It’s almost magical,” she said to herself and had to admit that the
spell was also upon her. Perhaps a dozen times a day she would puzzle
over the torn papers in her pocketbook. But then, it was Judy’s nature
to puzzle over things. It was for that reason that she usually chose
detective stories whenever she sat down with a book. That hammock up
there on the roof garden was an invitation to read, and soon Judy and
Irene had finished all the suitable stories in Dr. Faulkner’s library.
They had seen a few shows, gazed at a great many tall buildings, and
found New York, generally, less thrilling from the street than it had
been from the roof garden.
Pauline sensed this and worried about entertaining her guests. “How
would you like to go and see Grant’s Tomb today?” she suggested.
“For Heaven’s sake, think of something a little more exciting than
that,” Judy exclaimed thoughtlessly. “I’d rather find a library
somewhere and then lie and read something in the hammock.”
“So would I,” agreed Irene, relieved that Judy hadn’t wanted to see the
tomb.
“Well, if a library’s all you want,” Pauline said, “why not walk along
with me and I’ll show you one on my way to school.”
“A big one?” Judy asked.
“No, just a small one. In fact, it’s only a bookshop with a circulating
library for its customers.”
Judy sighed. It would seem nice to see something small for a change.
She never recognized this library at all until they were almost inside
the door. Then her eyes shone.
What an interesting place it was! On the counters were quaint gifts and
novelties as well as books. The salesladies all wore smocks, like
artists, and had the courtesy to leave the girls alone. Pauline had to
hurry on to school but left Judy and Irene to browse. Before long they
had discovered a sign reading MYSTERY AND ADVENTURE. That was what Judy
liked. Rows and rows of new books, like soldiers, marched along the
shelves.
“What a lot of flying stories,” Irene said, absently removing one of
them from its place.
“And murder mysteries,” Judy added. “It’s always a temptation to read
them. _Murders in Castle Stein_....”
She started back as her eye caught the author’s name.
It was Dale Meredith!
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